The BBC may have denied that the adverse reaction to its proposed Planet Relief event on climate change led to its cancellation, but it certainly didn't help.

The idea, said to have been 18 months in development, would have seen stars such as Ricky Gervais and Jonathan Ross take part in a "consciousness raising" event early next year.

But the idea immediately drew criticism from Newsnight editor Peter Barron and head of television news Peter Horrocks when it came up in a session at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International TV Festival.

And when your own executives publicly criticise an idea, you have to be very committed to it to go ahead and brave more negative headlines.

The issue of climate change remains a very political one and the BBC was always going to have to tread carefully over an event of this nature.

Its own recent report on impartiality didn't help its cause, when it said the BBC had "many public purposes of both ambition and merit - but joining campaigns to save the planet is not one of them".

The fact the corporation had already extensively covered Live Earth this summer meant another big event could have looked like overkill.

Despite the fact that Planet Relief had been in development for such a long time, it was remarkable how little senior executives within BBC Vision actually knew about it when asked off the record at Edinburgh, with genuine confusion about what it actually could entail.

The negative publicity may have focussed minds on why the corporation was planning such a thing - and added to the decision that ultimately it was not worth it.

In a mark of just how controversial climate change has become, just as the BBC was attacked for proposing Planet Relief in the first place, its decision not to go ahead was also attacked.

Friends of the Earth said it was "disappointed" at the decision while the Independent today devoted its first three-pages to the issue.

With climate change not going away any time soon, this may well just be the start of many more controversies for the BBC to come.